If AI is becoming such an important part of real estate, why are more than half of Realtors still not using it regularly?
That may be the most important question buried inside the National Association of Realtors’ new 2026 Realtors Technology Report. The good news is that AI adoption is clearly accelerating. The more complicated story is that there is still a massive gap between trying AI and making it part of the way agents work every day.
NAR found that 23% of Realtors use AI daily and another 25% use it weekly. That means 52% are not using AI even weekly. Most alarming: Nearly one-third, 31%, say they are only experimenting occasionally, 9% are curious but have not tried it, and 12% say they are not using AI and do not plan to in the future!
AI is gaining ground
There are plenty of encouraging numbers in the NAR study. More Realtors are using AI regularly, and a majority say AI has had a positive impact on their real estate business. That includes 16% who describe the impact as significantly positive and another 39% who call it moderately positive.
Interest also remains strong, but mostly around what they want to do with AI, not what they’re doing. NAR found that 54% of Realtors are interested in using generative AI for content creation during the next 12 months, while 48% are interested in AI-powered lead generation and follow-up.
I’m not surprised agents expect AI to generate leads. I’m asked about that in almost every class I teach. My answer is always the same: that’s not really what generative AI does. AI can do a terrific job helping agents fill their funnel, but it is not the easy button for lead generation agents who assume it can be.
While these are not the numbers of an industry ignoring AI, they are the numbers of an industry still trying to figure out how to make AI useful.
We all have a big job to do in teaching more agents about AI because it’s massively useful for them.
Trying AI is not the same as using AI
One of the most revealing numbers in the report is that 31% of Realtors say they are still only “experimenting occasionally” with AI. Opening ChatGPT once in a while, asking it to write a social post or trying another chatbot because someone mentioned it at a conference is not the same thing as knowing how to use AI as a reliable business tool.
NAR provides a pretty good clue about why that gap remains so large. When Realtors were asked about the biggest challenges in adopting new technology, 63% identified the learning curve, making it the top challenge in the study. Cost followed at 59%, while 44% said there were simply too many options and it was hard to choose.
Again, this is why the biggest AI challenge in real estate is not awareness; it’s education.
Agents have discovered AI as a writer
NAR also gives us a fascinating look at what agents who use AI are doing with it. Just like we’ve seen every year with the original Delta Media annual AI study that’s been looking at this since 2024, writing listing descriptions was No. 1, used by 75% of AI users. Social media posting comes next at 56%, followed by creating emails and follow-ups at 52%.
Those are useful applications, but they also show how narrowly many agents still view AI. Usage drops to 30% for market summaries, 27% for document review and summarizing, 23% for pricing insights and comps support and just 13% for role-playing and objection handling. (OMG: Please ask your MLS to offer my new 5-Day AI Challenge – AI is so much more than content creation!)
Agents have clearly discovered AI as a writer. Far fewer appear to have discovered AI as a decoder, problem-solver, fixer, coach, brainstorming partner, researcher, or how you can chat with your transaction and so much more. Clearly, this is where some of the biggest practical opportunities remain.
ChatGPT dominates for a reason
Among Realtors who use AI, 91% say they use ChatGPT. Gemini is next at 42%, followed by Copilot at 27% and Claude at 25%.
Those numbers tell me agents are already figuring out that not every chatbot does the same things equally well. Claude is a fantastic AI tool for analysis, reasoning and pretty good at writing, but can’t create an image. I gave it a PDF with 100 images to use its computer vision to review, and it told me I’d run out of tokens. I gave the same one to ChatGPT Business, and it ran the report I needed in less than 2 minutes! For a real estate agent who increasingly needs AI to work with text, documents, screenshots, photos and marketing images, that matters.
ChatGPT’s dominance is not just about brand awareness. It reflects something practical: agents increasingly need an AI platform that can do more than write.
The real gap is AI education
Over the last 18 months, across the U.S. and Canada, online and in person, I’ve taught thousands of real estate agents and brokers. And one thing has become increasingly obvious: agents do not need more AI hype. They need better AI instruction.
They need practical examples they can immediately use in their businesses. They need to understand which tools are best for which jobs, what information should never be placed into an AI system, why human review still matters and how to use AI without surrendering their own expertise or judgment.
They need to understand the danger of free AI tools for business use. With a free tool, agents are the product, and so is their data. For business purposes, agents must use business-grade AI and the built-in safety it provides.
It’s why we are doubling down on more AI class offerings, including a new monthly AI Deep Dive series designed to keep agents current as the technology changes. The goal is not to chase every new AI feature. It is to give agents a continuing source of practical, sensible, safe and responsible AI education.
This is vital because the next group of agents adopting AI may be very different from the early adopters. They don’t know what they don’t know. And that’s important because privacy and accuracy risks are increasing exponentially with some of the new AI tools being launched.
AI literacy and AI proficiency are becoming vital to the real estate profession. Occasional use of AI is not going to close the gap.
Getting from trying AI to really using it
Yes, the new NAR numbers show substantial progress. But the industry should not measure success simply by getting more agents to open ChatGPT.
The real opportunity is making sure the next wave of adopters learns to use AI the best way and the right way, with practical applications that improve their work and sensible guardrails that protect their clients, their businesses and themselves.
Which brings us back to the question we started with: If AI is becoming such an important part of real estate, why are more than half of Realtors still not using it regularly?
We have an AI education problem. So, let’s teach more agents about the best and safest ways to use AI every single day. Contact me if I can help!
